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Can cats therefore learn to make
certain sounds i.e. imitate certain human sounds
if they know it will get a favorable response?
Here I will have to give cats the benefit of the
doubt. It may be that, in spite of lacking the
apparatus for speech, some cats do indeed make the
effort. Equally, it may be that owners are
over-compensating for the cat's inability to talk
and are hearing what they want to hear, regardless
of what the cat has really said!
Another feature of human speech is that it
comes in bursts; a mix of different sounds and
pauses between sounds, plus inflection and
intonation. Tone of voice probably means much more
to a cat than the actual words used, although many
owners maintain that their cat understands every
word they say. Cats certainly manage intonation
and can miaow in a questioning manner, a demanding
manner, a forlorn manner or simply as a
statement.
By observing our response they adopt the
various tones of miaow for appropriate
circumstances. Puss probably isn't thinking
"I want to go out so I shall ask
nicely," he is more likely to be thinking
"I want to go out and I know that this type
of noise usually does the trick."
In their attempts to communicate with us on our
own level, some cats put together full
"sentences" of noises and pauses. They
might simply be inviting us to talk back to them
(most cats like this sort of attention from their
owners). It is interesting that such cats string
together a series of different sounds into a
single burst of communication, with pauses between
"words", which an owner likens to a
sentence. Scrapper (one of felinity's brighter
sparks) could hold his own in a conversation with
me although I haven't a clue what he was saying,
he just liked to talk and liked me to talk
back.
If he did understand what I was saying to him
he could have taken the Business Studies exam with
me (if he was trying to enlighten me on a
particular aspect of management structure then I'm
afraid it went right over my head). Some owners
say that their cats do much the same and are right
chatterboxes, with Siamese and Oriental cats being
particularly vocal.
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